Nadia Boulanger's Rare Work and the Prix de Rome

This is one of the rare works by Nadia Boulanger, published in 1915 by HEUGEL in France. In 1913, her sister Lili, six years her junior, became the first female composer to win the First Grand Prize of the Prix de Rome, an award that her father, Ernest Boulanger, had also won at the young age of 20 in 1835, subsequently achieving success as a composer for the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Nadia herself had failed twice in 1906 and the following year, yet winning this First Grand Prize was truly her fervent wish. Her brilliance, having won first prizes in harmony, fugue, composition, organ, and piano accompaniment classes at the Paris Conservatoire just three or four years after losing her father at the age of thirteen in 1900, was acknowledged by her teacher Fauré and everyone else. Encouraged by the great pianist Raoul Pugno, who supported her and the Boulanger family, she attempted again in 1908. However, the result was again a Second Grand Prize. As the linchpin of the family, supporting her talented but frail sister Lili and her mother (Raïssa Boulanger, a Russian princess whose father was Prince Ivan Mischetzky, a cultured woman who enjoyed singing and raised Nadia and Lili to be musicians) who became a widow at 42, Nadia, though already extremely busy at 18 with numerous concerts and giving lessons and music analysis classes at home, earnestly desired to win the Grand Prize for further future security.

The Prix de Rome: History and Rules

The Prix de Rome was established in 1663 by Colbert as a gateway for young artists studying painting, architecture, sculpture, and engraving to study in Rome and achieve success. Its organization was the Royal Academy (the French Academy in Rome) located within the former Medici Villa in Rome's Borghese Gardens. In 1803, a "music prize" was added to the general arts categories as a gateway for young composers. In the preliminary round, academic fundamental skills in counterpoint, harmony, and fugue were tested. For the final round, candidates were given a 4-5 week residency to compose a piece for solo or multi-voice singing and orchestra based on a text specified by professors of the Paris Conservatoire and others. Works that passed the final round were first judged by professors of the Paris Conservatoire, and then their ranking was determined by a vote of all members of the French Academy of Fine Arts. First Grand Prize winners stayed for two years, and Second Grand Prize winners for a shorter period, at the former Medici Villa to further their studies, dedicate themselves to creating works, and were given opportunities for public performance and score publication.

There were many controversies, such as Ravel, who applied five times but only ever received a Second Grand Prize. One reason cited for this was that the final decision was made by all members of the Academy (general artists), and only five of the 40 members were musicians. However, in Nadia Boulanger's case, the cause of her failure lay with her: she submitted a work for string quartet for a composition assignment that required a four-voice vocal fugue.

Nadia's Failure and Reconciliation with Saint-Saëns

Why did she do such a thing? Although she wrote a letter of explanation stating that she had not intended to cause disruption, the judge at the time, Saint-Saëns, wrote a furious letter of protest to Nadia. A rift developed between the two after this, but they reconciled in later years. Saint-Saëns himself had also received only Second Grand Prizes in his two attempts in 1852 and 1864.

Analysis of the Work and Philosophical Context

Now, this work was written five years after the bitter experience of the Prix de Rome, around or after 1914, coinciding with her sister Lili's First Grand Prize win. It is written in a minor key, and a dark, oppressive atmosphere pervades the entire piece. In January 1913, Pugno, who had been like a guardian to her, suddenly died in Russia, where they had been on a concert tour together. How profound must have been her shock, left alone in her mother's homeland... And did she find her roots there? Composed entirely in minor keys, at first glance, there seems to be no harmonic tonal context. It modulates while repeating short modal motifs of tetrachords. It is a simple contrapuntal canonic movement in unison, based on ancient monophonic modes. Chromatic modulations and enharmonic modulations occur, and a clear context unfolds within them. The core of this is a simple musical language based on ancient modes and intervals. It feels as if one is tracing back the history of music, its very origin, where everything begins in a chaotic world and then an ordered system emerges. And it feels as if one is witnessing the history where, according to the pre-historic Greeks, the origin of all things was number, and from the consonant intervals derived from the numerical ratios of sound resonance and vibration frequencies, various expressive modes were born through their arrangement. This musical language remains unchanged after 2000 years and possesses the potential for infinite evolution. The pentatonic scale, familiar to us East Asians through folk songs, is also used in Scottish music. The Greeks identified individual characteristics within music, systematizing them as influencing moral and enduring human character, and through the theory of ethos, they regarded music (Greek: mousike) as a literary art, akin to poetry and dance.

Pythagoras was a mathematician and philosopher, and on the other hand, he also founded a religion with special precepts for repenting sins in this life to escape reincarnation and transmigration. This was a century before the birth of Buddha. The enduring character of humanity seems to be universal, unchanged across all nations, then and now. It is said that the reason Beethoven's Ninth Symphony came to be performed at the end of the year in Japan was because German prisoners of war, held in Japanese camps during the war, introduced it to the Japanese. It is said that Beethoven is not very popular in recent Western Europe because he was not a Christian – but while the French prefer wine to beer, they love Beethoven and Mozart. If Boulanger were to hear that, she would surely grimace and say:

"Oh, you people! When you listen to the fugue of Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 110, or the Hammerklavier, do you not feel God there?!"